Programme aims to simplify process analysis

Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Apr 13, 2006

Symbion Systems has launched a major programme to provide process control solutions to reduce the total cost of ownership of analytical process analysers.

Symbion Systems has launched a major programme to provide process control solutions to reduce the total cost of ownership of analytical process analysers for industries such as hydrocarbon processing, chemical manufacturing, paper and semiconductors.

This new programme results in part from a recent agreement with GE to supply process control software based on architecture developed by Symbion.

"Recently, Symbion Systems signed an agreement with GE Fanuc Automation to develop and market process analytical technology software to diverse industries, with particular emphasis on online process analysis".

"Under the new agreement, GE Fanuc will have exclusive rights to market the PAT software for use in life sciences process analysis while Symbion will take the lead in providing analytical software to industries other than the life sciences", said W Michael Doyle, Symbion Systems' president.

"While the details of the agreement remain confidential, the deal means our company's capabilities will benefit substantially from the increased financial resources, ongoing revenue stream, and multiyear shared product development resulting from the GE alliance".

"We expect the impact to be far reaching and sustained".

In the traditional world of distributed control systems (DCS), relatively simple sensors are used to provide one dimensional (scalar) information which can be processed directly by the DCS.

With the advent of process analytical technology, the situation has drastically changed.

An analytical instrument, such as a near-infra-red spectrometer, may provide as many as 2000 independent spectral data points in less than a second.

This large amount of data must be collected, stored, displayed, transmitted, and processed in such a way as to provide timely and manageable information about the process variables of interest.

Symbion fills this role by bridging the gap between the instrumentation at the manufacturing process and the data historian, Scada or other enterprise-level data system.

For senior managers charged with streamlining their manufacturing processes and who experience great difficulty with implementing or maintaining traditional analytical process control solutions that are simply modified laboratory control software, Symbion's software provides a seamless alternative by taking the difficulty out of implementation and greatly reducing the cost of deploying analytical process analysers.

Applications addressed by Symbion Systems process analytical software suites include hydrocarbon processing, specialty chemicals, polymer streams, paper viscosity control, waste water analysis and the profiling of optical coatings on silicon wafers during semiconductor manufacturing processes.

At the heart of Symbion's solutions are three analytical software suites.

Symbion-DX and Symbion-RX provide a standard process analytical software environment for controlling, sequencing and networking analytical instruments, sampling systems and data analysis routines.

Symbion - LX is an analytical laboratory software suite for spectroscopic analysis, connectivity, compliance and control.